Cycleography.com

That was the year that was

Well it’s almost a full  year since my last post (Wowzers!). I’m not quite sure where all the days went :¬/ but here’s a brief synopsis of the more memorable ones…

Since my last update I have moved jobs, spent three months working in Ottawa, spent a month working in Belgium, attended 2 funerals, spent a couple of weeks in Zurich, been for a crazy long weekend in Paris for the Rugby and most importantly (in the context of this site at least) cycled from Glasgow to John O’Groats with my good friends Geroge and Paul. In doing so we managed to raise over £1900 for the Special Care Baby Unit at the Queen Mother’s Hospital in Glasgow (see here for more details or to belatedly sponsor us).

Planning is already underway for this year’s trip, GLASTO ‘09 – Glasgow to Stornoway (and beyond), so watch this space for further updates.
It’s good to be back in the saddle :¬)

Posted in News | March 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »

W/E 18/05/2008

Until the weekend this week was spent mostly on the trainer putting in a bunch of half hour speed sessions trying to maintain an average speed of 20mph. The first 5 minutes of the half hour was spent trundling along slowly building up to hit 20mph at the end of the 5 minutes, giving me 25 mins to get the avg speed up from around 15 to 20+ mph.

It was pretty tough going, especially given that the previous week had been spent entirely on the sauce. I’m sure I could have bottled the sweat spewing from my pours and sold it down my local park. Double filtered, extra fermented, sipping liquor.

On Saturday I was cycling down to Rhu with PH joining me on route. The route I’d planned would take us to Balloch on the cycle path and then up through Glen Fruin to Garelochhead and down in to Rhu.

Glasgow to Rhu via Balloch and Glen Fruin

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Posted in News | May 19th, 2008 | No Comments »

Gearing up for the summer

The first instalment of the new gear I ordered recently arrived yesterday.

Up until now I’ve been using some SPD pedals with a pair of Gore-Tex Shimano boots, very good for the winter and wet weather but a bit over the top for the warmer summer weather. So I ordered some new pedals and shoes more suitable for the sunnier times ahead (here’s hoping at least).

Shimano PD-R540 SPD SL Sport Pedals

With a different cleat mechanism to the older SPD system, the spiel says that it offers more stability due to the wider base and that it eliminates the ‘hot spot’ that you sometimes get with SPD, which I have noticed on occasion.

However, the cleat is much bigger and makes for a shoe which is far from ideal for walking in, the idea being that you’re unlikely to be walking far in your road shoes anyway. We’ll see!

Specialized Sport Road Shoes

Apparently “Road racing shoes are designed without compromise to provide the optimum power transfer between your foot and the pedal”, hence the hard plastic (or “Glass reinforced nylon”) sole.

Thankfully these don’t have the ‘let the water in’ hole that I’d seen on Geo’s shoes, so may be slightly more suitable for Sunny Scotland.

So I got the new pedals attached and donned my new shoes to cycle to work this morning. I have to say that I’m not terribly convinced by the concept of hard plastic soles. I can see the reason for it with the ‘optimum power transfer’ stuff but it wouldn’t have been too difficult to add a rubber coating to avoid any slippage.

That aside, I have to say the SPD SL mechanism is far easier to use than the previous SPD system I’ve been used to. Easier to get into, easier to get out of and with a decent amount of lateral movement that you didn’t really get with the SPDs.

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Posted in Kit & Kaboodle | April 29th, 2008 | No Comments »

New Section Added

I’ve added a new ‘Tours’ section (see the menu above) to the site which so far doesn’t consist of much but will be gradually getting updated over time.

At the moment there are some details from my trip around the Western Isles last year and some details of the upcoming Glasgow To John O’Groats trip. Mostly just route maps but it is still a work in progress.

I’m not sure about the navigation within the sections, this Wordpress thing isn’t the easiest thing in the world to use for more static content.

Posted in News | April 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »

GLAJOG ‘08 Training – Loch Katrine

This was our first proper training run for GLAJOG ‘08. Since first talking about it we’ve added an extra body in the shape of Big “PH” Paul, who joined us for this ride on Sunday afternoon.

We actually did the route in the reverse direction of the route map below, choosing instead to do the “easier” route up Duke’s Pass at the end of the ride and finishing with the nice big downhill back into Aberfoyle.

lochkatrineloop.gpx

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Posted in News, Routes | April 21st, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Accelerometers to the rescue

Neat stuff! A pretty cool solution for making the cyclist more visible in the dark.

An American inventor based in the UK has won an international design competition.

Michael Chen, 28, won a £6,000 prize for his Reactiv cycle jacket, which changes colour as the cyclist brakes.

How it works

The jacket uses an accelerometer to sense movement, changing the colour of LEDs on the back from green when accelerating, then to red when braking.

A tilt switch in the jacket also makes LEDs in the arm flash amber when the wearer lifts their arm to indicate a turn.

More details at Bike Radar

More details at James Dyson Foundation

Posted in Gadget Radar | April 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

A very wise man once said…

“Remember you’re clipped in”

And that is a very sound piece of advice. However, he forgot to add “and make sure you remember how to get out of your pedals”.

It was that second piece of advice I could have done with when I found myself teetering at the junction of Buchanan Street & Argyle Street this evening. The problem stemmed from the fact that I was on my mountain bike (due to the fact that the road bike is currently hooked up to my trainer) and that I had decided this morning to change the regular pedals for a set of clipless pedals that had been kicking around for a while but I hadn’t gotten round to putting on the bike. I knew from previous experience that it wasn’t a good idea to go out with a set of untested pedals, so made a point of adjusting the pedals and testing until they seemed ok.

However, while testing the pedals I noticed that something seemed to be different from the pedals on my road bike. It took me a while to work it out but I realised I was having to twist in the opposite direction to get out of the pedals. With the pedals on my road bike I twist my heel away from the bike to get out but with these pedals I was having to twist my heel into the bike to get out. I’m not sure why that would be, I double checked they were on the right way around but figured it was no big deal as it seemed to be easy enough to get out.

And thus I found myself at the junction of Buchanan Street and Argyle Street coming to a halt to avoid going into the side of a nasty big bus only to find as I twisted my heel that nothing was happening and I couldn’t get out of my peddles. And before I knew it I found myself spread eagled on the pavement in front of a bunch of young neds who found it all rather amusing.

• ned 1: “Had a few too many beers big man?”
• embarrassed: “Damn stupid pedals!”
• neds: “Aye right!” (followed by much hilarity)

So, I picked myself up and got back on my bike and cycled off into the distance.

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Posted in News | April 16th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Week 2 – No Bikes At Work Day

In my official role as chief cycleography dude I hereby declare this, and all future Fridays, No Bikes At Work Day. Fridays are for the pub and other such religious ceremonies like 2 hour lunches.

That’s no physical bikes. That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to look at bike related stuff, which is good because I got an email from the nice folks at Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative this morning linking to some rather smart looking touring panniers.

Now I’m not the type to get all giddy and weak at the knees when looking at bags and the like but these are some pretty serious looking bits of kit.

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Posted in Kit & Kaboodle, News | April 4th, 2008 | 4 Comments »

Week 2 – So much for the Duracell Bunny!

Well I set out earlier again this morning with enough time to fit in 3 or 4 laps of the Queens Park loop. I cycled over and did a nice easy lap before resetting my GPS to do 3 timed laps. All was going well (except nearly giving some old guy a heart attack while out walking his dog, but that’s another story. All I”ll say is… “Jesus! Ring a f*%?ing bell or something!”), things were felling good and I felt I was setting a pretty good pace.

However, when I finished my 3 laps and stopped to check the time on my GPS the fecking batteries had died. I could swear they were showing 3 bars when I started and they don’t generally run down that fast.

I definitely need a shiny new cycle computer

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Posted in News | April 3rd, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Week 2 – I have seen the light

Now that the lighter mornings are here I figured it would be a good idea to get up an hour earlier than normal and add some extra miles to my regular commute. So this morning I got up early (not quite the hour I had intended but it’s a start) and added a loop round Queens Park to my route. It’s a 2 mile loop with a couple of little hills and my intention is to build up to fitting in 7 of these loops of a morning before heading for work.

Queens Park Loop

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Posted in News, Routes | April 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »